Focus group study as a qualitative method for information systems research

As business, organisational and technological trends emerged rapidly, researchers and practitioners need to keep in pace and respond in a timely manner. Focus group research is a useful and effective tool to gain rich empirical insights and feedback. This is an existing useful method which has been widely used in other research domains such as marketing, but not in information systems (IS) research. This paper highlights the usefulness and effectiveness of focus group research for the study of emerging IS trends and technologies (eg. the emerging field of knowledge management), and proposes the use of focus group study as a formal strategy for qualitative IS research. In particular, the paper will briefly discuss the potential roles of focus group research in IS from the perspective of qualitative research, whereby it can serve as: a data collection technique to obtain rich and broad insights, from diverse perspectives, about an issue, a product or a service; an effective method for grounded theory approach; and as a complementary method to other research techniques and methodologies (focus group method in synergy with other methods).